Morrigan’s Blood by Laura Bickle

Morrigan’s Blood

Crow’s Curse

Book One

Laura Bickle

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Syrenka Publishing LLC

Date of Publication: Sept. 25, 2020

ASIN: B08B9TJ4V9

Number of pages: 188

Word Count: 57000

Cover Artist: Danielle Fine

Tagline: Garnet has the blood of the legendary Morrigan – and legions of vampires and witches will go to war to possess that power.

Book Description:

Garnet has the blood of the legendary Morrigan – and legions of vampires and witches will go to war to possess that power.

As a trauma surgeon, Garnet Conners has seen more than her fair share of blood. But when one of her patients walks off the operating table and disappears into the night, she finds herself caught in a war between legions of vampires and witches in her city.

Garnet has dreamed of bloody battlefields for years – and a mysterious lover who controls a kingdom. In her waking life, Garnet is shocked to meet that man in a club. Merrel knows her from another life, a life in which she was the legendary Morrigan, goddess of death and war.

Garnet rejects the notion of magical incarnations altogether. But she falls in with Sorin, a handsome warlock who’s determined to protect the former bootlegger city of Riverpointe from a secret society of vampires. Haunted by crows and faced with undeniable proof of magic, Garnet scrambles to protect her career and loved ones from magical violence.

Abducted by vampires who seek to turn her into a vampire against her will, can Garnet seize the power of the legendary Morrigan to forge her own path in her embattled city? Or will she be forced to serve as a fearsome weapon in a deadly nocturnal war?

Amazon

Excerpt:

          “What have you
got for me tonight, folks?” I asked.

            I
backed through the doors of the operating theater, butt-first, gloved hands
lifted before me to keep them clean. I took small steps, mindful not to lose
traction. Those thin booties were slick, and I’d fallen on my ass on more than
one occasion when I made sudden moves. Tonight, I was determined to get through
surgery in an upright position and not have to scrub in twice.

            One
of the nurses read from notes on a computer terminal. “This guy was found in
the parking lot of a closed bowling alley. Speculation is that he took a trip or
two through the pin setting machine and got badly torn up.”

            “Well,
that’s a first.” I turned toward the operating room table. The light was so
bright that hardly any shadows were cast in the room. They focused on the
unholy mess on the middle of my table.

            This.
I’m supposed to fix this.

            A
man lay, unconscious, on the table. His chest was torn open, flaps of skin
oozing onto wads of gauze and a paper sheet. His face was a mass of blood, now
being daubed at with sponges. The anesthesiologist had found his mouth to
thread a tube down, and someone had managed to get an IV started in one of his
scraped-up arms.

            My
nose wrinkled under my mask. “What do the X-rays show? How deep does the damage
go? Did he get a CT?”

            A
nurse clicked on a flatscreen monitor that displayed a carousel of CT images.
I  squinted at them, muttering dark
oaths.

            “Radiologist
says it looks like a lacerated pancreas, punctured lung, and two rib
fractures,” the nurse said. The image switched to the head, and he said: “Also
the bonus of a fractured orbital bone.”

            I
stared at the CTs. “Let’s start with that lung. We leave the pancreas, and call
plastic surgery on that orbital bone. This guy’s going to need all the king’s
horses and all the king’s men to put him back together again.”

            “Will
do.”

            I
gazed down at the poor suffering bastard. I liked seeing the imaging, but I
preferred to get a good visual with my own eyes on my patients. Sometimes
X-rays and CTs didn’t tell me everything I needed to know about what to start
sewing where. Something about seeing where the blood moved and pooled in an
injured person gave me an idea of where to begin. The blood always led me to
where I needed to direct my attention. Where it spurted required my immediate
expertise. Where it clotted or moved lazily, I could wait a bit. When blood
drained out of a limb and had left it white, I needed to add more. I noted with
approval that he was already receiving a transfusion. As long as blood was
moving, there was a chance for him

            I
frowned at his chest and touched the edges of the rends in his flesh with
gloved fingers. Those were ragged and would have to be cut clean before I sewed
him back up. I could see the edge of one of those protruding ribs, sticking up
like a finger. I glanced over his limbs, counting the usual four. Hey, it pays
to count. Count twice, cut once. I mentally cataloged bruises and scrapes,
nothing that needed my immediate attention, though I flagged the palms of his
hands to get a few stitches from the surgical resident. Looked like defensive
wounds, like the guy had tried to fight the pin machine, but lost.

            My
eyes moved up to his face. One blackened eye was swollen shut. My fingers and
gaze wandered over his scalp, checking for major wounds, when I spied a
laceration at his throat.

            I
gently probed it with gloved hands. Some kind of puncture…the machine must have
caught him near a seeping vein. It had nearly dried up, smelling rusty and not
like the bright, coppery blood of his more critical wounds. It could still take
a few extra stitches.

            I
stared down at the unfortunate guy’s oozing chest. Peeling back a flap of skin,
I felt around for the collapsed lung. My finger quickly squished around and
found the hole, and I extended my free hand for a scalpel. Time to get this
party started…

            …when
the patient sat bolt upright on the table. His good eye was open, rolling.

            I
yanked my hands back and yelped at the anesthesiologist, “Curt, what the actual
hell?”

            The
OR erupted in a flurry of activity. The anesthesiologist arrived at the patient’s
side with a syringe, while nurses tried to push the patient back down.

            But
he was flailing, windmilling with his arms like a pro wrestler in the ring. The
IV ripped out of his arm, and the line slashed back at the anesthesiologist,
whipping across his face. The patient reached up and ripped the tube out of his
throat. His foot caught an instrument tray, sending scalpels flying. His blood
line yanked away, spewing crimson all over the floor.

            I
held my hands out, using my most calming voice. Not that I had a particularly
calming voice; I was a surgeon. We don’t talk to patients. But I tried: “You’re
safe. I’m your doctor, Dr. Conners. If you just lie back, we’ll make you
comfortable and—”

            The
guy shrieked and launched himself off the table. The paper sheet tangled around
his legs, and he grasped it around his waist as he put his shoulder down and
aimed for the door. His shoulder hit me in the arm, and I slipped on my
booties, landing on my ass on the tile floor. The patient launched through the
swinging doors and disappeared down the hall.

            I
swore and ripped my booties off my sneakered feet. I clambered to my feet and
punched the intercom at the door with my elbow. “Security, code orange at OR
6.” I couldn’t say: I’ve got a runner taking off down the hall. Please send
somebody to stop him, because anyone listening to that would freak the hell
out, and I would get a talking-to from HR.

            I
straight-armed the door and took off after the guy. I had no idea how the hell
this man was still walking around. Those injuries should have flattened him,
and he’d been anesthetized. I had graduated med school with Curt a few years
ago, and knew him not to be a careless anesthesiologist who played on his phone
in the OR.

            The
patient skidded down the hallway, landing at a dead end, where a window
overlooked the parking lot. The sun had just set, and the sky was the violet
color of a fresh bruise. I approached him slowly, like I was herding a feral
cat. I tugged my mask down to try and give him a human face to look at.

            “Hey,
it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” I murmured soothingly. I wanted to keep him
here until security arrived. If he got even further loose and hurt himself,
that would be one obnoxiously long incident report. And an even more involved
surgery after that.

            “No,
no,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not gonna be okay. The bloodsuckers found
me…and the Lusine couldn’t protect me.”

            “I
don’t know who that is,” I said, thinking that the guy had probably run afoul
of some loan sharks. Maybe the mob? “But you’re safe here. We can protect you.”

            “No,”
he gasped, his face twisted in agony. “No one can protect me. And no one can
protect Emily.”

            He
turned toward the window, backed up a few steps.

            “No,
wait…” I could see what he was trying to do, and I was helpless to stop it.

            He
rushed the window, aiming for it with his shoulder. All the latches on the
hospital windows on patient floors were welded shut, but this wasn’t an area
where conscious patients had access, and the window was not secured against
suicide attempts. The glass buckled under his shoulder, the window crumpled
away, and he pitched through in a hail of glass into the falling darkness.

            I
rushed to the window and stared down at the parking lot in horror. Three
stories down, the patient sprawled on the parking lot blacktop, flattened like
a bug under a shoe.

            Curt
had come up behind me. “Oh, my god, Garnet…did he…”

            “He
jumped,” I said, my heart in my mouth. I turned and ran to the stairwell,
barking at him. “Get a gurney and the ER team.”

            I
burst into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. As I rounded the
third curve, my path was blocked by a tall, dark-haired man in a brown velvet
blazer and jeans. He was the type of guy that I might have liked to meet in my
off-time—he had a kind of scholarly intensity in his hazel gaze and a bit of
roguishness in the stubble that covered his sharp jaw.

            “Stand
aside,” I blurted. “Emergency!” As if my bloody gloves and surgical gown
weren’t warning enough.

            But
he blocked my path, one hand on either stair rail, his long arms spanning the
length of the stairwell. “That man is dangerous,” he growled softly.

            “That
man is under my care,” I announced, lifting my chin. I walked into the man,
figuring that he would give way to my outstretched bloody gloves. Like a normal
person would.

.           But
he didn’t. My sticky gloves nearly mashed into the velvet of his jacket, and he
didn’t flinch. This close, he smelled like old books and moss.

            “You
can’t go down there,” he said. His voice was soft, but insistent. 

            My
eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to tell me where to go,” I chirped petulantly. I
ducked under his arm, darting out of his reach, and barreled down the steps the
remaining way to ground level.

            I
rushed out into the parking lot and stopped short.

            “What
the actual hell—”

            The
patient peeled himself off the ground and crawled to his feet. He reminded me
of a half-dead insect when he did so, shaking and rickety and dripping blood.

            That’s
impossible, I thought. There was no way that a human being could do that. I took
two steps toward him…

            …and
a dozen people flitted out of the darkness, from the shadows beneath cars and
behind shrubs. The overhead parking lot lights, haloed by moths, illuminated
their long shadows on the pavement.

            I
breathed a sigh of relief. The squad was here and would get him stable, get him
back to my OR.

            But…my
brow wrinkled. That wasn’t the squad. Nobody was in uniform. They converged on
him as he turned, screaming.

            “Stop!”
I shouted.

            Heads
turned toward me. Their faces were moon-pale and glistening in the lamplight.

            The
man in the velvet jacket grabbed my arm, dragging me back. “You want no part of
this.”

            “Don’t
tell me what I want,” I growled. I stomped on his instep and twisted my arm to
break his grip at the weakest part, the thumb. I whirled and ran toward the
fracas.

            The
shadowy people had plucked my patient off the pavement, clotting around him.

            I
yelled at them, the way I might yell at pigeons in the park who were eating my
dropped French fries.

            Overhead,
the parking lot lights shattered, one by one, in a series of pops. Someone had
a gun. I flinched back, shielding my face from flying shards of plastic with my
hands, as I was suddenly plunged into darkness. I heard fighting, yelling, as
if a gang war had broken out in front of me, roiling in the dark where no one
could see.

            Or
at least, as dark as things could get in Riverpointe. Riverpointe was a
decently sized city, and ambient light filtered back quickly from the freeway,
headlights on the access road to the hospital, and the hospital’s helipad
above.

            As
my vision adjusted, I realized I was alone. The people who were trying to
abduct my patient, my patient…even that fascinating-smelling velvet guy…all
were gone. 

            Ambulance
lights flashed at the end of the parking lot, approaching me. Behind me, I
heard the hammering of footsteps on the stairwell. Security spilled out behind
me, along with a few cops who’d been hanging out in the nurse’s lounge. The
EMTs pulled up to the curb, and there were all of a sudden a couple dozen
people churning in a uniformed cloud around me.

            “Where’d
the guy go?” a security guard asked me.

            A
moth that had once orbited the parking lot lights flitted down and smacked my
face. I batted at it, grimacing.

            “I
don’t know,” I whispered, stunned. “He was just…taken.”

            The
moth landed on the ground on its back, wiggling.

            With
bloody fingers, I picked it up and placed it gently in a nearby shrub. Lights,
voices, and radios crackled around me. Questions rose and fell, directed at me
in a tide of inquiries I couldn’t answer. But I stared at the bloody moth,
stained by my touch, as it sought a safe place among the churning shadows and
light.

About the Author:

Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs and sometimes reads them to her cats. Her books have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Laura’s work has also been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016. The latest updates on her work can be found at authorlaurabickle.com.

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“With Feathers”

By Laura Bickle

My mother spoke with the dead, but I only talked to crows.

It was that way ever since I was a little girl, hiding under the tablecloth of the table where my mother told fortunes and murmured to lost ancestors. Men and women would come to our door, seeking voices from the past and hints of the future. My mother offered both with a cup of coffee and warmth, a spoon clinking slowly against her silver wedding ring and the rim of the cup.

I wanted to inherit her gift so hard as a child, but the dead never so much as uttered my name in a dream. 

But not the crows. The crows were my familiars.

My earliest memory was of a great black bird tapping at my window. I crawled to it and hauled myself up to the sill, holding out a sticky hand of cereal. The pieces fell, and the crow gobbled them right up. I clapped in delight, startling him away.

I fed them ever after from my window. I learned to tell them apart, their shapes and the way their feathers lay. I gave them names and met their children when the parents brought them to wolf down my toast crusts. 

In return, they brought me treasure, shiny things. Usually, they were coins, some of them silver. Sometimes, it would be a bit of broken costume jewelry, a straight pin, bobby pins, the face of a watch. All these things were filthy. I cleaned them carefully and hid them away in a shoebox.

My favorite crow was a beautiful bird with one leg. She had a caw so loud that she could shake the lightbulb in my bedside lamp. I named her “Peg,” because I was young and not very creative.

My grandmother and aunts would come to visit every few years and whisper after I’d gone to bed: “She hears no voices? None at all? Perhaps that’s just as well. Though, she might grow into it…”

I never did. As I grew into a teenager, I became convinced that my mother was a charlatan, that she took money for magic from the weak. To my reckoning, if the dead were speaking, they never spoke to me, and therefore they must not speak at all…at least not in my little world. 

Business slowed. My mother wanted us to move to a cheaper apartment five blocks away. I despaired…how would I feed my crows? How would they know where I’d gone?

I spent my last dollar on a big bag of dry cat food. When all the boxes and furniture were gone, I waited outside, below my window, for Peg to come. She eventually arrived, perching on the sill on one leg and turning her head to look at me quizzically.

“You must follow me,” I told her. “You and all the others.”

I dropped two pieces of cat food on the ground. Her favorite treat. After almost a minute, the crow fluttered down to gobble the bits up.

I walked away six feet, then dropped another piece. She hop-fluttered over to me, clumsy on earth as she was graceful in the sky.

I backed up to the sidewalk and put down some more. She followed, with a great hoarse caw that summoned her children. My heart pounded.

They followed me down the block, seething black shadows on the pavement. 

They tracked me all the way to the new apartment. It seemed I’d been holding my breath the whole time. I climbed the fire escape, up to my new bedroom window, where I’d set out a piece of plywood. I dumped the last dregs of cat food on the surface.

A dozen crows descended on the snack. I caught Peg’s eye.

“Please understand. I’m here now. Please come back.”

Peg said nothing, taking wing into the blue sky.

I worried the whole next day if she would remember. I ran home from school, up to my room.

I rushed to the window and breathed a sigh of relief. Six crows perched on the fire escape rail, while Peg hop-paced on the plywood. The corn flakes I’d left out that morning were gone.

I hurried to empty my pockets of a crushed granola bar and a stale pretzel, which they descended upon greedily with their sharp beaks and talons. 

The next day, they brought me a thimble, encrusted with dirt.

Money, which was never plentiful, grew even scarcer. My mother took a job as a secretary, which barely covered rent. I went to work as a cashier at a donut shop. I was allowed to take home any food that was left at the end of the day. Many days, my mother and I and the crows had glazed donuts for supper.

One month, we came up short. Shorter and later than usual. My mother’s boss decided to go on vacation and gave all her employees a week off – without pay.

I felt this, heavy in my heart, at the end of the month as I sat on the fire escape. I didn’t want my mother to see me cry.

But the crows would listen. Peg hopped beside me. They never got close enough for me to actually touch them. But I could see the confusion in her dark eyes.

I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “You birds are lucky,” I said. “You can build your own homes.” At least, I assumed that. I had never actually seen a crow’s nest; I only knew that they flew west with the sun at the end of the day, beyond the bus stop and the hospital and the graveyard.

Next day, there was a gift waiting for me on the plywood feeding station. I didn’t know what it was, at first. I scrubbed it up and turned the piece of metal over in my hand. 

A cuff link. Like the kind that men in suits would sometimes wear when they came into the donut shop. This one had a blue stone the size of a pea in it.

I bit my lip. Maybe it was worth some money. 

I took it to the pawn shop. Worries roiled in my skull: What if they laughed at me and told me it was plastic? What if it really belonged to someone, and they were looking for it? What if..?

I shook my head. If it was worth something or not, it was mine. A gift. I would not feel guilty for this.

The pawn shop gave me two hundred dollars for it. Enough to make the last bit of our rent and order a pizza. I saved the crusts for the birds.

I lay awake that night, certain the cops would come pounding on our door, searching for a cuff link. Who would believe that a bird had given it to me?

My mother believed me. She asked me where it came from, and I told her. She just nodded and slid the crisp twenties into an envelope to go under the landlady’s door.

I came home the next day to see blue and red strobe lights flashing before our apartment building. My heart leaped into my throat. It had been stolen. I was caught.

I felt the urge to run. But I knew that there was no use in that. My mother would lie to protect me and place herself in trouble. I squared my shoulders and walked to the corner.

A cop stopped me. “Are you Jordan?”

I lifted my chin. “Yes.”

“We need for you to…” The last thing the cop said was obliterated by the rush of blood in my ears. I looked past him, at a stopped car. At an ambulance. At a sheet-covered figure lying in the middle of the crosswalk, a figure wearing my mother’s shoes.

I screamed, louder than any crow.

***

It was a hit-skip, they said. Someone plowed my mother down in the crosswalk. Witnesses caught a partial license plate, and the police were searching for a guy who seemingly never drove without at least a six-pack under his belt.

The apartment was so empty without her. For weeks, I tried to talk to the dead, yelling and sobbing at the walls.

Only the crows answered me with their hoarse chatter. I remembered to feed them, but I did little else. I couldn’t bring myself to touch my mother’s unmade bed, to wash a fork that she’d used, or even to throw away the pizza box that contained our last meal together. 

The crows came and went, in fluttering shadow. They brought me a new assortment of baubles: buttons, a hair comb, an earring. I collected them without much thought, except to wonder if the earring might be worth something. It was crusty, but it looked like it real gold. Or how I imagined real gold would look if I had any experience with it.

I pressed my fists to my eyes as I sat on the fire escape. Why couldn’t I talk to the dead just this once to tell my mother that I loved her?

The beat of wings disturbed my hair. I looked down beside me. Peg held something in her beak.

I waited for her to drop it and fly away. Except she didn’t. She stood still, looking at me with bottomless eyes. 

I opened my hand and extended it gingerly to her.

She dropped the thing into my palm and took off with three beats of her wings.

I stared at the lump of mud. I chipped away at it with my fingernail. A ring, I thought. I spat on it and rubbed it against my shirt. I held it up to the sun, and my heart dropped.

It was my mother’s silver ring.

The one she’d been buried with.

My mind flashed back to all the dirty treasures, and I stared at the sky, where the crows were flying west, toward the graveyard.

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The Price of Safety by Michael C. Bland

Science Fiction Thriller

Date Published: April 6, 2020

Publisher: World Castle Publishing

By 2047, no crime in the U.S. goes unsolved. No wrongdoing goes unseen. When Dray Quintero learns his 19-year-old daughter Raven committed a heinous act, he covers it up to save her life. This pits him against the police he’s respected since he was a child and places him in the crosshairs of Kieran, a ruthless federal Agent. To survive, Dray must overcome the surveillance system he helped build and the technology implanted in the brains and eyes of the citizens.

Forced to turn to a domestic terrorist group to protect his family, Dray soon realizes the sheer level of control of his adversaries. Hunted and betrayed, with time running out, will Dray choose his family or the near-perfect society he helped create?

 

Excerpt

Chapter 1 from Michael C. Bland’s “The Price of Safety”

Igniting a miniature sun was the riskiest thing we’d ever attempted, yet we were doing it in front of the entire planet.

While Nikolai bragged about our innovations to the cameras, reporters, and two hundred VIPs assembled, I stood sixty feet away, facing the control panel of our unlit sustained-fusion reactor, searching for any indication our creation would explode. The seven-foot-long, concave control panel displayed the time remaining until ignition. Forty-five seconds.

I didn’t use the control panel to conduct my search. Instead, I projected our schematics and stress tolerance estimates onto the lenses in my eyes, the data hovering before me like a clear computer screen stretched across my vision. Hidden from everyone.

 “...each pod contains the highest concentration of dark matter ever collected,” said Nikolai, the CEO of our company, who’d been my friend once. “Eighteen months’ worth of space harvesting efforts.”

 We’d designed not only the pods but the entire ten-acre complex: the energy grid, the fifty-yard-wide containment chamber where we’d try to light the “sun” that would power our reactor, the domed observation room with celestial images on the ceiling and a massive window that revealed the chamber, and Nikolai’s temporary stage in front of the window. We’d also devised the safety protocols, power regulators, and energy-capture systems. The biggest risk was the medicine-ball-sized metal core we hoped to ignite. A single flaw could doom everyone here.

If we succeeded, though, our reactor would provide mankind with cheap, reliable energy—and us a spot in the history books. Nikolai would become richer than ever, with countries begging for our reactor. I’d see my creation come to life, which would tangibly better mankind, fulfilling a promise I’d made.

My personal cell phone buzzed in my pocket, a number I didn’t recognize flashing in the corner of my augmented sight. I ignored the call and reluctantly stopped my search as the countdown neared zero. Years of planning, of calculations and simulations and more money than I cared to contemplate, came down to this moment.

Beside me, Amarjit, my bushy-eyebrowed director of robotics, took a deep breath as I activated the reactor. Four titanium-geared positioning robots, each twenty feet tall, stepped forward in unison inside the solar-cell-lined, circular containment chamber, and lifted the dark matter containment pods to precise spots around the core. Reinforced metal rods moved two additional pods into position, one rod descending from the ceiling and the other rising from the floor.

“Dark matter is the key to our efforts,” Nikolai continued, his sharp chin pointing at the crowd. He wore his graying hair short, his thin frame coated in a pale suit. He also wore his datarings, which was odd, as my team and I were handling the sequence. “This unique substance causes regular matter to draw on itself. The resulting compression, which will occur at the molecular level throughout the core, is what we’re confident will create the fusion spark.”

The robots locked their joints into place.

I hadn’t wanted anyone here but was outvoted by our board, my simulations used against me. But the simulations were distorted with assumptions. I wasn’t sure the core had the right mix of elements, wasn’t sure about the pressure needed. Wasn’t sure about a lot of it.

I took a breath myself—aware of the lives at risk, the stakeholders and VIPs and broadcasting cameras—and powered up the dark matter.

The robots’ hands and the two cradles glowed as they released energy into the pods, activating the matter. Combined reverse-gravitational pressure enveloped the core to five hundred million newtons per square meter, squeezing it from all sides.

There was supposed to be light, the purest imaginable, maybe preceded by a flash. But nothing happened.

Our readouts measured the core’s compression, but showed nothing that indicated an ignition: no fusing of molecular fuels, no sign of liquefaction.

As anxiety crawled up my spine, I increased pressure, but nothing changed other than rising stress levels in the robots’ joints. I maxed the energy to the pods, compressing the core to pressure levels found under the Earth’s crust.

Amarjit shot me a look, his caterpillar-sized eyebrows squeezing together.

I knew the danger.

The pods were made of aluminum, the only metal that could contain energized dark matter without interfering with its reverse-gravitational force. But the dark matter became more volatile the more we assaulted it with energy, and the pods had limits to what they could hold.

With the forces we were manipulating, it felt like depending on a balloon to contain a shotgun blast. If one ruptured, our entire complex would be decimated, along with a portion of Los

Angeles. The city south and west of here should be protected from the blast by the mountainside we’d carved into, but maybe not. The amount of destruction would depend on the energy levels when everything went to shit.

The readouts on my lenses flashed red. We’d reached our thresholds, yet the core remained unchanged.

My personal cell phone buzzed again, the same unknown number.

Ignoring the call, I told Amarjit, “We’re aborting.” I touched the control panel to kill the power to the pods, but the system didn’t respond. “What the hell?”

I waved Nikolai over, but he wasn’t looking at me; he faced the chamber instead, his determined expression one I’d seen countless times. His hands hung at his sides, but his fingers were moving, entering commands. His silver datarings flashed as he typed on his legs, the rings registering his fingers’ movements as keystrokes—tracking where each finger moved as if he was typing on a keyboard—and sending his commands to his neural net, which I realized was now the only access point to the fusion reactor.

Behind him, the crowd became restless.

“Boss,” Amarjit said.

I followed his gaze. Inside the chamber, the robots extended their arms, moving the dark matter closer to the core. First two inches. Then four. Then six.

“I’m not doing it,” he said.

“It’s Nikolai.” I slapped at the digitally-projected controls, but they didn’t react. “He fucking cut us off.”

WARNING flashed red in my vision as alarms sounded.

The faceplate of one of the robots buckled from the reverse-gravitational forces emanating from its pod. The knee joint of another started to twist.

“Dray,” Amarjit said.

“I see it.” My hands skittered across the control panel as I tried to reboot the system but failed, my brow damp with sweat.

A strained sound reverberated inside the chamber, followed by a pop, and a crack stretched across the curved window before us. The air surrounding the robots shimmered like asphalt on a summer day.

I brought up the master settings to search for a power override. “Can you take command of the robots remotely?”

“No,” he said as he jabbed at the panel. “They can only be controlled from here.”

Robot Number Two—with the twisted knee—contorted further as the pressure from the dark matter mounted, sparks flying from its wrists. None of our simulations had covered this, but I knew what would happen. A few more degrees and its joint would shatter. It’d be thrown against the wall, the pod ripped open. We’d be obliterated in the explosion.

I needed to cut Nikolai’s signal.

The control panel rested on a bioplastic-enclosed base connected to a hollow metal railing. The dataring receiver had to be in the base. I hadn’t included one in the panel’s design, but it would’ve been easy for him to add. I wondered what else the self-serving bastard had done.

“You bring any tools?” I asked Amarjit, who shook his head. “Get everyone out of here.”

“There’s no time.”

He was right. “Then save yourself. Go.”

As he hurried away, I squatted below the panel, took my metal ID badge from around my neck, jammed it into the cover’s seam, and tore away the bioplastic to expose the motherboards, quantum cubes, and fiberwires that connected to the panel. I spotted the receiver immediately, an inch-long, fan-shaped device, and ripped it out, severing Nikolai’s connection.

I stood and hit the sequence to reestablish a link to the robots.

As systems came online, I wondered why the core hadn’t sparked. The reaction sequence should’ve initiated, especially with so much pressure. That’s when I noticed the liquefaction gauge. A section of tritium had liquified but was stunted, limited to the second quadrant.

Closest to Robot Number Two.

Where the pressure was angled.

I’d approached this wrong. I’d directed pressure uniformly around the core.

Regaining control, I linked with the robots to pull them back, but first shifted Robot Number Three—the least-damaged one—to the right, angling the pressure from its pod—

The core ignited.

Throughout the tritium veins that threaded the core, protons added to atoms in a domino effect, the veins turning into contained plasma, and brilliant light burst forth, painting the chamber. No explosion threatened us, no pressure, unlike the destructive effect of nuclear fission. Instead, warmth from the molten metal reached me through the glass, the chain reaction spreading over the core’s surface to begin consuming the denser, solid metals that would feed it for the next twenty years.

The warnings in my lenses, thrown in stark relief by the star we’d created, turned green as I pulled the robots back to reduce the pressure to acceptable levels, though one regarding the robots’ structural integrity remained red.

The chamber’s window tinted, returning our vision to us.

Nikolai threw up his arms to the crowd. “As promised, nuclear fusion! The first of many Gen Omega plants we’ll build across the country to address America’s energy needs.”

Applause washed over us.

“Bastard,” I murmured, shaking with adrenaline.

I reduced the dark matter’s energy to the minimum amount needed to keep our newborn sun suspended in position, while Amarjit, who’d rushed back to help, ran diagnostics on his robots, two of which no longer stood straight.

A phone number flashed on my lenses, the same one as before. This time it was calling my work cell. Possibly one of my employees. “Dray here.”

“Dad, I need help,” my nineteen-year-old daughter said.

I was caught off-guard, not only because it was Raven’s voice, but because of the fear in it. I’d never heard her so afraid.

Concerned, I moved away from Amarjit. “What happened?”

“You’ve got to come.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Not me. It’s....” Someone else. Trever Hoyt, her boyfriend, who Raven had gone out with tonight. He was a decent kid, though opinionated and a little snobbish. I had hoped she wouldn’t get serious with him, but they’d dated for almost a year. “Do you remember the time in

New Trabuco when I hit that rock? It’s worse than that.”

She meant there was a lot of blood. His blood, presumably. “You need to call the po—”

“I would, except it’s me.”

I didn’t understand, then did. She’d caused the bleeding.

I started to ask if they’d been in an accident, but she was being cagey for a reason.

Normally talkative and bright, she was avoiding saying certain words, aware that spiders patrolled the airwaves.

Watching what she said. Trever bleeding. The way she was acting, it could only mean one thing: she’d done something illegal, as hard as it was to believe.

Though I was still sweating, I felt a chill. No one got away with a crime. Not in 2047.

The people around me, the media and VIPs and shining fusion core, Nikolai waving at me to join him on stage as he said my name and proclaimed this was the start of “more wonders to come.” None of it mattered now.

I squeezed my finger-thin phone. “Where are you?”

“His parents’ place. Their work. There’s a spot we made where you can get in. I’m in a small building just past a maintenance road.”

My concern increased. She meant Trever’s parents’ facility. I’d never been there and didn’t know what they did, but I’d heard visitors required a security clearance due to the sensitive nature of government contracts the Hoyts had. It was a place she never should’ve been.

“On my way.”

* * *

I exited the 605 at Beverly and raced through Whittier, passing countless neighborhoods, most of which were dark this time of night. I closed my data streams to reduce my digital trail, and tried to avoid the surveillance that existed even in this sleepy part of Los Angeles, the cameras and traffic scanners and microphones that monitored most of the country. I wanted to take side streets to further reduce my history, but needed to get to Raven. She wasn’t the type to ask for help. Strong and resourceful, she helped others, cared about the neglected and abused—otters, immigrants, the homeless—and debated fiercely, but never with a mean spirit. She would become a force as an adult—though with the way she’d sounded, I worried for her future.

My thoughts flickered to my son Adem, who’d died before he learned to talk. Even with how safe I’d helped make our world, I couldn’t protect him. Couldn’t save him. I feared I wouldn’t be able to save Raven, either.

I passed the guarded entrance to Hoyt Enterprises and followed the fortified, ten-foot-high wall for blocks until I located Trever’s red-and-black McLaren. I tried to tamp down my fear as I parked my Chrysler E-650 sedan beside the metal wall. I had to be level headed and calm, though I didn’t feel either.

Spotting the hole Trever and Raven had created, two of the vertical panels pried apart, I went to it. I’d maintained my weight over the years, but I’d always been thick. As a result, I had to squeeze my way through the gap.

Multi-story buildings occupied most of the compound’s interior—production, office, warehouse—though they stood back from the wall, the structures dark, the only light in the complex coming from the entrance far to my left. Closer to me, one-story storage structures stretched in long rows, the nearest five yards away. Straight ahead was an empty space followed by an asphalt road and a cluster of residence-type buildings barely visible in the darkness. To my right, a flat-topped building sat on top of an unlit hill adjacent to the facility. The property was fenced, and the two parcels shared a wall.

I started toward the residence-type buildings, sticking close to the nearest storage structure, followed the structure to the far end, and found a security camera staring at me. I froze, but my image had already been captured.

My apprehension growing, I continued forward and crossed the road.

The buildings were old, possibly the property’s original development. Three could have been homes, another a garage, a fifth some kind of lab. I hesitated, unsure which one she might be in, heard a sound to my left, and cautiously proceeded toward the residence in that direction.

“Raven?”

She appeared in the shadowed doorway, pulled me inside, and hugged me, trembling.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“It was Trever’s idea. Dad, he attacked me. He tried to rape me.”

I stepped back. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the swelling in her face, her bloody lip. Her shirt was torn.

A primal rage began to grow. “Did he...?”

“No.” Her composure, thin as it was, cracked. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Her words tempered my anger and fear, though not by much. “Whatever you did was

self-defense. You were justified. The police will see the truth.”

“I can’t.”

“They’ll listen.”

She grabbed my arm. “His implant. I ripped it out.”

His neural net, the implanted technology that linked our brains to the web, work, and every other digital source. Federal law required that every citizen have one, and tampering with them was punishable by death, regardless of the circumstances. There had been complaints about the law’s extremity, even demonstrations, but nothing had changed, and most people didn’t care, too enamored with the access their implants granted.

My lips felt numb. “Is he alive?”

“I don’t think so.”

She led me to the next room, where Trever lay in a pool of blood, his body contorted, his implant nearby.

I’d never seen an implant outside of a person’s head. The part that was usually visible, the silver-dollar-sized reflective end, stuck out no more than a quarter-inch from a person’s temple. However, the entire implant was over an inch and a half long, with two curved leads that jutted deeper into the brain: one about two inches long and the other about five inches.

“He grabbed me and tore at my clothes,” she said. “I tried to crawl away, but when he grabbed me, I kicked him as hard as I could, and he rolled off. That’s when I saw the pipe.”

She indicated a rusted drainage pipe, one end curled back where it had broken off.

I squatted beside it, careful not to touch it. “You hit him with this?”

She nodded.

“How many times?”

“Just once. When I swung, the pipe caught the edge of his implant. I didn’t mean to.”

Trever wasn’t the first corpse I’d seen, but he was the first born of violence, which made me unsettled. His right temple was caved in where his implant had been. The metal ring that had secured his implant in place was missing, along with a chunk of his skull. Raven’s years of playing softball had saved her from a heinous act—but at a terrible price.

A fierce protectiveness rose inside me, joining my fear. The police would be methodical. I had to anticipate what they’d find.

The building we were in was being renovated. The floor had been reduced to a concrete slab and the walls gutted, with spools of wire stacked in a corner and construction supplies strewn about. A nearby wall had blood splattered in an arc.

Nothing contradicted her story, though doubt nagged at me. “Ripping out his implant was a fluke,” I told her. “It was self-defense. A jury won’t convict you."

“He didn’t rape me. I stopped him. If people could’ve seen his face, how he lunged at me, what he said, they would understand, but there aren’t cameras in here. No one will believe me.”

A prosecutor could claim her injuries were self-inflicted. Say she’d torn her own clothes. Without hard evidence, she was in danger.

She didn’t have to add that Trever’s parents were politically well-connected. Mina frequently interacted with them as chief of staff for the mayor of Los Angeles. Jesus, Mina. She was going to be horrified.

“What do we do?” Raven asked.

“I don’t know. Who knows how many cameras I passed getting here, not to mention the GPS in my car?”

When I left the reactor, I’d shielded my face from the cameras I knew about, but dozens of others had probably nailed me, including the one inside the facility. Hell, our phone call could be used against us. My work cell had a built-in scrambler, so the cops would only get one side of our conversation, but with the other evidence, it’d be enough.

She didn’t plead, didn’t back away. “I’ll turn myself in.”

I started for her, careful not to step on Trever’s implant, but paused.

The implant.

If she hadn’t ripped it out, hadn’t killed him, I would’ve wanted her to confess to the police. But if she did, she would pay the ultimate price.

She couldn’t just leave. Not only had she been caught on camera, she was leaving DNA: blood, hair, dead skin. I was, too.

We had to do this a different way and hope it worked, because I couldn’t lose her. She and her sister were my world.

“I have an idea. You’re not going to like it,” I told her. “I’ve heard rumors about people stealing implants. Cops don’t want to admit it happens, because it’s one of the only crimes they struggle to solve.”

“Why would people steal...? Oh. To become someone else.”

I nodded. “Each has a unique code cops can use to identify us if they get a warrant. A criminal who wants to hide from author ities can’t unless they obtain a new code, which means a new implant—one that’s been stolen, wiped, and recoded.”

“You want to blame Trever’s death on implant thieves.”

“To do that, I’ll have to take yours.”

Her eyes grew big. “What?”

“If yours isn’t stolen, the authorities won’t believe you.” I held out my hands. “I’ll take it out straight, minimal damage. You can tell the police you two were here hiding out or whatever when men jumped you. Trever tried to defend you, but they overwhelmed him and ripped out his implant. They were easier on you, as you didn’t fight, using the same pipe—”

“The same pipe? Dad, I don’t want to die.” She looked panicked.

I took her in my arms. “You won’t. I promise. Tell the cops the men were masked and didn’t say anything.”

When I let go, she wiped her cheeks. “How do the police find me?”

“As soon as I take your implant, I’ll call 911.”

She paled further, eyes darting, but nodded.

I had her lay near Trever, yet far enough away that she didn’t touch his blood.

“I’m scared,” she said.

I wasn’t a father. I was a monster for suggesting this. But I had to keep her safe.

I touched her cheek. “I’ll make it as clean as possible. With the right amount of force, it’ll pop out.” I had the strength. I’d manhandled the robots we’d used in the reactor. “This is the only way.”

As she rolled onto her side, I picked up the pipe. I placed my hand on her head, my calloused fingers nearly palming it. “I love you.”

I gently slid the hooked lip of the pipe under the edge of her implant, wincing when the pipe touched her skin. After seeing Trever’s neural net, I knew Raven’s had been implanted straight into her skull. If I pulled up, like removing a nail, it’d minimize the damage. I didn’t want to do this, and would probably never forgive myself, but it needed to look like a criminal stole her neural net.

I had an image of her in prison garb, curled on a metal cot. Another of her strapped to a gurney, getting a lethal injection.

I couldn’t let that happen, whatever the cost.

I held her in place with my free hand and pulled on the pipe, at first gently and then as hard as I could. For the briefest of moments, the ring held—she screamed—then gave way with a wet sound. The implant tumbled to the ground as I fell back, the pipe nearly flying from my hand.

She started to shake and gasp. Sparks flickered in her eyes, and blood welled up in the hole I’d opened in the side of her head.

A panic unlike anything I’d ever felt seized me.

What had I done?

 

About the Author

Michael C. Bland is a founding member and the secretary of BookPod: an invitation-only, online group of professional writers. He pens the monthly BookPod newsletter where he celebrates the success of their members, which include award-winning writers, filmmakers, journalists, and bestselling authors. One of Michael’s short stories, “Elizabeth,” won Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 2015 Popular Fiction Awards contest. Three short stories he edited have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Another was adapted into an award-winning film. Michael also had three superhero-themed poems published in The Daily Palette. He currently lives in Denver with his wife Janelle and their dog Nobu. His novel, The Price of Safety, is the first in a planned trilogy, and has been recognized as a finalist in both the National Indie Excellence awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. For more information about Michael’s life and work, visit www.mcbland.com.

 

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A Vampire’s Spell by Marie-Claude Bourque blitz

A Vampire’s Spell
Marie-Claude Bourque
(The Order of the Black Oak – Vampires #1)
Publication date: September 24th 2020
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance

A VAMPIRE’S SPELL: A Slow-Burn Urban Fantasy Romance

Meet the Order of the Black Oak: a powerful order of modern-day warriors fighting evil to protect the ones they love.

Son of an ancient vampire and a legendary French witch, guilt-ridden Mont-Royal Immortal Valerian St-Amand must team with a powerful New England witch to protect his city from a crazed scientist seeking immortality. But as his well-guarded heart softens for Maisie Thibodeau, their quest to eradicate true evil from the streets of Montreal destroys any hope of everlasting love.

If you love loyal tough guys with hearts, satisfying slow-burn paranormal romance and safe Happily Ever Afters, then the Black Oak World is for you.

“5 stars – Fantastic series of action, magic and awesome romance. You will fall in love with the characters and feel you are right with them.”

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

—

EXCERPT:

A creature. Val tightened his fist.

She hadn’t said the word, he had. But he knew that was what witches and warlocks thought of him and his brothers.

And while he couldn’t care less about the opinion of others, he was expecting more from her. But no, she was only here to study him.

As he grimly stood in the Sanctuaire’s chapel, he watched her pour over a giant paper map of the city. She had stretched it over the altar, bordered it with five black candles and speckled the surface with anvil dust mixed with bone powder. A handful of railroad spikes and the hypodermic needle that had pricked Emmeline lay at the center.

His mind was on the witch instead of whoever had been after his blood.

He just couldn’t let it go. A future high priestess. Sounded like Marianne Thibodeau had forgotten to mention a few things about her granddaughter.

It shouldn’t matter. Really. Already her essence was fading from his veins. The gentle touch a waning memory.

Yet here she stood above the map. Her jet-black hair tied into a loose braid fell over one shoulder, the thick strand ending just at the tip of her breast. The small and high curve was much too defined under the small black t-shirt. The fabric of her top thin enough that he could make the outline of a small push-up bra.

Stop it, diable! Focus on the job. His balled fists and pained breath didn’t go unnoticed.

“You need to feed, Valerian.” Father Grégoire was right beside him, a heavy hand on his shoulder while his eyes went from Val to Maisie. The priest knew exactly how the immortal felt, the woman drawing both a surge of lust and hunger deep within him. His insides twisting and growling.

Val lifted a defiant chin at his friend. “We have time.”

Author Bio:

Marie-Claude Bourque is a Seattle-based author of gothic paranormal romance and the winner of the American Title V award with her first novel ANCIENT WHISPERS.

Her writing features modern-day fantasy skillfully weaved into infinitely romantic supernatural stories between smart strong women and complex passionate heroes.

Happily Ever After always absolutely guaranteed!

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